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Over sixty per cent of EU lobbyists represent corporate interests

October 20th, 2015

by Erik Wesselius

One of the burning debates about EU lobbying is the imbalance between lobbyists representing businesses and those representing other, public interests. One would expect the EU’s lobby transparency register to provide clarity on this point, but this is not the case. After the transition to new disclosure requirements earlier this year, many organisations declare unrealistically high numbers of lobbyists. For that reason, the figures for total number of lobbyists declared cannot be used to assess the balance between different interests in the EU lobby register.

Note: The data mentioned in this article reflect the situation on 15 October 2015. When you read this, some of the mentioned organisations may have corrected their register entry, in reaction to the publication of this blog. The rankings may also have changed, reflecting changes in registrations in the EU transparency register since 15 October 2015.

Fortunately, the EU lobby register does hold some pieces of information that can give us an indication of the imbalance between different interests: the number of registered lobby entities per category and the number of parliamentary lobbyist passes held by different categories of lobbyists.

Category

EP Accreditations

Lobbyists (persons)

Lobbyists (FTEs)

Registered Organisations

Trade and business organisations

1579

10599

6048

2100

Non-governmental organisations, platforms and networks and similar

1434

55012

43294.25

2170

Companies & groups

1200

24637

19008

1428

Professional consultancies

813

3921

2902.5

593

Think tanks and research institutions

198

588

8815.5

425

Trade unions and professional associations

173

4805

3292.5

495

Other in house lobbyists

132

1513

790.75

260

Self-employed consultants

70

483

321.75

291

Other sub-national public authorities

59

1810

1363.25

104

Law firms

58

337

161.25

102

Organisations representing churches and religious communities

55

281

133.75

37

Other public or mixed entities, created by law whose purpose is to act in the public interest

53

1668

1045.5

139

Transnational associations and networks of public regional or other sub-national authorities

37

706

360.25

38

Regional structures

35

1495

1159.75

111

Academic institutions

32

15647

13067

148

Total corporate

3852

4774

Total

5928

8441

The above snapshot of the statistics on numbers of lobbyists as they were declared per category on 15 October 2015 shows a total of 8,441 registered organisations, of which 4,774 are different types of commercial lobbyists (marked yellow). This is 56.6 per cent of the total number of registrants. The share of NGOs among the total registrants is 25.7 per cent (2,170). These categories are not clear cut, as there are numerous business organisations registered as NGOs and there might be some consultancies lobbying for NGOs, but it gives an indication of the imbalance.

The division of parliamentary lobbyist passes is similar: 65.0 per cent (3,852 out of 5,928) are held by commercial lobbyists, 24.2 per cent (1,434 out of 5,928) by NGOs. Of course, not all lobbyists register for an accreditation badge for the European Parliament and so these numbers, again, are merely an indication. But taken together, these two data sets suggest that over 60 per cent of EU lobbyists (organisations and individual lobbyists alike) represent corporate interests. They substantially out-number those representing other interests: NGOs, trade unions, academics, think tanks and all the other lobby actors in the Brussels bubble.

Such off-the-mark figures make it impossible to derive a realistic number of lobbyists declared in each category of the register, as becomes clear from the second and third column of the statistics for declared lobbyists per category. Only if the register secretariat starts making a more active effort to monitor the content of registrations and to secure corrections where necessary, the register will provide reliable and useful information on the number of EU lobbyists.

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